Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. John R. Erickson

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      We went ripping out of the corral, me in the lead and Drover bringing up the rear. We zoomed past the saddle shed, under the front gate, and on an eastward course that would take us directly to the house. However, you might say that we never got there.

      I knew something was wrong when I ran into a hogwire fence, hit that sucker dead center and put a pretty severe kink in my neck.

      “Halt! Hold it right here! Unless I’m mistaken, someone has thrown up a hogwire fence. Obviously they don’t want us to sound the alarm. The question is, why?”

      “Yeah, but why?”

      “I just asked that question.”

      “Oh.”

      “It wouldn’t hurt, Drover, if you paid a little more attention to what’s going on around here.”

      “Okay. You don’t reckon we got into the garden by mistake, do you?”

      “Impossible. The garden is a full fifteen de­grees north of our present location. No, Drover, this is no garden. This is a new fence, thrown up by someone or something to keep us from warning the house. And you know what that means.”

      “Sure do.”

      “What?”

      There was a long silence. “Well . . . it means that somebody around here knows how to dig postholes in the dark.”

      “Yes, but I’m talking about a deeper meaning.”

      “Oh.”

      “A meaning far darker and more sinister. It could mean, Drover, that this ranch is about to be attacked.”

      I heard him gasp. “By the fiends?”

      “That’s a possibility we can’t ignore. Now the question is, how do we get past this barrier they’ve thrown into our path?”

      I began pacing. My mind seems to work better when I pace. But it wasn’t easy, pacing at this particular point in space, because the area was overgrown with weeds and noxious plants—a rather interesting clue, since this was around the first of May and weeds and noxious plants don’t often appear so early in the Panhandle.

      I salted that piece of information away for future reference and continued pacing. I could feel the weeds snapping beneath my feet. It takes a pretty stout variety of weed to keep me from pacing, especially when I’m putting clues together and following them to a logical conclusion.

      “Drover, we have two contingency plans for a fence of this type: one, we go over it; two, we destroy it. Either way, it’s nothing to sneeze at.”

      Drover sneezed.

      I glared at him. “Why do you do things like that?”

      “Like what?”

      “When I say we’ve got this thing licked, you lick your chops. When I say this is nothing to sneeze at, you sneeze. Sometimes I think you’re trying to make a mockery of my investigations.”

      “Doe. I’b allergic to domato plets.”

      “That’s all?”

      “Cross by hard and hobe to die.” He crossed his heart.

      “All right. Then the question we have to face now is—if you’re allergic to tomato plants, why are these weeds making you sneeze? Until we answer that question . . .”

      Suddenly I froze. My nose shot up, just as a bolt of lightning struck one of the cottonwoods down by the creek. The flash was followed by a loud boom.

      “Wait a minute, I think I’ve got it!”

      “Oh-h-h, I think I got it too!” Drover was lying on the ground with his paws over his eyes.

      “Get up, Drover. This case is taking on an en­tirely new dimension. Sniff the air and tell me what you smell.”